


Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

by sian1359



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Getting Together, M/M, Mission Fic, Pheels, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 21:05:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sian1359/pseuds/sian1359
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil lost more than his life on the helicarrier that day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [second_skin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/second_skin/gifts).



> Pinch hit for the 2013 Lump of Coul fan work exchange. I've removed it from the collection (temporarily, I hope) because an edit made it anonymous again and I wasn't able to get it unscreened, not because I have any problem with the fest.
> 
> The request was for a bunch of great things; mostly I went for the Coulson and May friendship, and the coming to aid Clint and Natasha. The pairing is because I'm currently incapable of not writing the two of them together.
> 
> The Wall Poetry Project is real. The poem I used has the proper credit listed as part of the story.
> 
> Trope Bingo Round Two Square: presumed dead

_"Agent Coulson, sir, we have a priority transmission coming in from Central for you,"_ Simmons spoke up on the comms, sounding even more diffident than normal, either because she and Fitz had been left back on the Bus during this current op and she somehow thought they were being punished for something (instead of simply not being needed and Phil not wanting to put them in any danger unnecessarily since they really weren't field agents no matter the teams initial missions), or because she was leery herself about the call, since they were already working a priority mission.

_"It's designated Tango Echo One Foxtrot One Bravo."_

Melinda turned Phil's direction and raised her brow. He didn't bother to hide either his grimace or his concern, not with her. They immediately began packing up the equipment they were using to keep an eye on Skye and Ward.

Surprisingly, Ward asked about the code before Skye could.

_"Tango Echo Foxtrot Bravo?  I've never heard of that one."_

Ward hadn't because it was a private code that only seven people – no, eight now that Akela had been recovered – knew, not a general SHIELD one. Melinda was the only one on the team outside of Phil who also knew what it meant. Phil supposed that at some point, he should at least read Ward and Skye in, though if he did that, he might as well not keep it secret from Fitz and Simmons. He should probably think about getting a new set of burn phones.

 _"What's to decipher?"_ Skye commented anyway, emotionally unable to let anything go if she figured out something someone else around her didn't know.

Even though she should be too busy completing her part of the mission to have the time to get involved in such an off-topic discussion.

_"You know, the first bit's just missing the Whiskey."_

_"The whiskey?"_ Fitz asked, his confusion obvious. Back on the Bus with Simmons, he'd be the last of the team to pipe up, since Melinda simply wouldn't. Even if she didn't already know what Skye had sussed out to be a basic, if private, 'oh shit' code.

 _"Duh. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,"_ Skye clarified, her voice only slightly condescending.

Simmons couldn't quite stifle the laugh at her partner's expense, while Ward didn't bother even trying to hide his snort, but Phil could also hear noises that intimated at least the two of them were anticipating the outcome of the message: Simmons putting whatever research she'd been taking advantage of her downtime to work on away, while it appeared that Ward was packing the completed drives away in the case he'd been carrying for Skye.

 _"You know, WTF?"_ Skye was continuing when Fitz didn't say anything _. "Jeeze, Fitz, net speak for what the fu –"_

_"Oh, right – "_

"We're done here, people," Phil interrupted the renewed round of laughter, his reaction to stopping someone from swearing over even a private frequency more or less ingrained from his time in the Rangers. "Immediate extraction. Fitz, Simmons, keep prepping for departure. We'll need to be wheels up the instant we're back."

While it was unlikely Phil was in the same area where assistance would need to be rendered, he expected he was the closest, at least of the people that Jasper trusted the most. And time, obviously was of the essence given the one code had been repeated.

 _"But I still have three more downloads to finished,"_ Skye protested. _"Come on, AC, I need a little more time."_

"How much more time?" Melinda asked before Phil could tell Skye no.

_"Fifteen minutes if you want me to leave things like we were never here. Maybe ten if you don't care that they figure out they've been hit."_

"How much would we be missing if you pull right now?" Phil asked off of Melinda's look. It wasn't the ideal situation, of course, for either matter. There would be consequences for aborting early; hopefully not for taking even an extra minute with the other to dialogue –

"Don't bother answering, just keep working," Melinda instructed Skye as she came over to put her hand against Phil's arm in caution or in a more directly warning for him to leave it with her. "I'll wait and watch over them while you go on back the Bus, Coulson. Skye, you have until FitzSimmons can get out here with the second car, then we all head back in to get our new orders whether you're done or not."

 _"Go, sir. We'll be fine,"_ Ward added in support, willing to have Phil's back without needing to know why, something Phil appreciated.

Unlike Skye, who had an innate need to question everything (though she was learning better about when she could push and when Phil just needed her to jump), Ward basically believed in SHIELD and the process … maybe even believed in Phil himself to be doing the needed thing, even if it didn't always match up with someone's personal feelings of what was right. Which wasn't to say that Ward couldn't be contrary when he thought challenging him was for _Phil's_ benefit. But it didn't look like this would be one of those times.

Thank god.

 _"Yeah, AC. What he said. We've got this,"_ from Skye.

 _"We're already on our way out, sir,"_ was Simmons' contribution.

Phil simply rolled his eyes at Melinda's knowing smirk and held out his hand expectantly. She handed over the keys.

***** 

Arriving back at the Bus, Phil hit the remote for the ramp, then eased the SUV up and over to the left, next to Lola. He didn't stop himself from patting his cherry 'vette (since no one was around to see him doing it), maybe rubbing it a little longer than he would have another time, for luck before heading out of the cargo hold and into the interior of the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III SHIELD had repurposed into an Airborne Mobile Command Station. He made a quick detour into the lab area to pick up one of Fitz's newest toys before heading up the stairs to his office.

Once in his office, he activated Fitz's computer and/or camera only jamming device, but not until he first logged in to list the activation as a scheduled test over the next half hour.  Considering it would have been useful on their current mission but hadn't  yet been authorized for use in the field (something he would be bringing up in his version of the after action report), he didn't expect that anyone back at the Hub or Central to flag the Bus going dark as anything out of the ordinary. 

"I'm going dark," he then informed his team, glad once more that he'd managed to convince Melinda to go back out into the field; there were so few people he trusted to be comfortable enough to turn over a mission, much less a team. But outside of Nick, Melinda was the SHIELD agent he'd known the longest, the two of them having come in and been assigned at training partners more years ago than he wanted to think about.

Making one last test by trying to log into the SHIELD system, only after he had no luck did he pull out the burner cell phone he always carried nearby but very rarely used.

Jasper's was the fifth number pre-programmed – designation Echo to Phil's Bravo. (Melinda's code was Alpha, as she'd been the one to come up with the idea, while Nick was Zebra, never changing no matter how many other people might be added in to the inner circle.) Phil's finger twitched as he scrolled past Charlie, as well as Delta, but calling either of them after eighteen months of silence would be unconscionable as well as stupid since he didn't know the situation on his end – or on either of theirs. Hell, he didn't even know if it would have been productive; there was no reason to expect either of his former assets still carried their own versions of this phone tree.

He stilled the twitch as well as his thoughts, and hit the dial button for Echo. It rang twice before he abruptly ended the call before Jasper would pick up.

Another safeguard of a very simple code, but then things didn't always have to be overthought or overly complicated.  Letting it ring only twice told Jasper it was Phil responding; that he was secluded and ready for Jasper to let him know what was going on.

Twenty seconds later (Phil timed it, for something to do while he waited), his phone started ringing.

"What's happened?" he asked instead of offering some sort of greeting.

_"How soon can you get to Constanța?"_

Phil marveled. They really were in the neighborhood; Sevastopal was just across the Black Sea from the Romanian coast. He didn't know off the top of his head, of course, but while looking it up, he tried to remember if he knew about any active mission going on in Constanța. Not that he was as connected to the down low on general SHIELD operations as he'd been before dying, but he did still have his sources – and an innate need to keep on top of things. He hadn't heard about anything planned in this area other than his own team's trip to the Ukraine, but there were several people who favored the "Romanian Riviera" on SHIELD's watch list, so it wasn't hard to imagine one of them had suddenly done something to make a standby mission go active.

"We can be there in less than an hour." 

_"Oh, thank god."_

"Jasper!" Phil couldn't help growling when Jasper immediately reverted back to silence.

_"Yeah, okay. Sorry. First thing you have to know is that no one's dead. At least not yet. The second is that no report has been filed. We figure there's maybe a twenty-four hour – well, no, you've probably only got nineteen hours at this point – before Hand or Blake demand a sit rep."_

_What_ he needed to know, maybe, but only half the answers and they, in turn, gave him many more questions. Still, Phil knew that Jasper had it together now, and that those answer would be forthcoming.

_"Thirty-seven minutes ago, Agent Woo contacted me through our own version of the Tango Foxtrot phone tree.  Four and a half hours ago, he'd been in the middle of running an op with Romanoff and Barton – "_

Shit. Phil's breath caught involuntary.

Most likely, however, Jasper would chalk it up to him being Strike Force Delta's former handler and him having, therefore, a vested interest in their wellbeing no matter that he'd had to move on. Or there was always the idea that if Phil ended up getting involved with those two now, after Fury had ordered him to stay incommunicado with pretty much everyone, SHIELD agent or Avenger alike, he'd be dealing with a lot more consequences than from shortening an intelligence gathering mission.

Of course, the actual likelihood of the Avengers – when said Avengers included Tony Stark – not having found out about his miracle resurrection was about as astronomical as, well, him surviving Loki killing him. Phil was still on the fence about why no one had contacted him after his return, waffling between the others actually respecting Fury's need to keep Phil's status secret (for whatever fucking reason), and all of them being too fucking angry at Phil's own part in the deception that they didn't want to talk to him. In no case, however, could he imagine them not knowing, not at this point.

(He was leaning more toward the latter reasoning over the former, in part because neither Stark nor Clint had ever shown that much respect toward inane rules, as well as because he, himself, had been too chicken-shit to make the first move in correcting the travesty for fear of finding out he'd been right.)

 _"Before you work yourself into a tizzy,"_ Jasper basically interrupted himself and pulled Phil's thoughts back to matters at hand, _"Romanoff is currently Scandinavian blonde, with the tan to match. Someone would have to see her naked to know that neither look is natural, and would have to know her otherwise just as intimately to recognize her as the Avenger's Black Widow. It's pretty much the same with Barton. He's let SHIELD's Costume Crew lighten his hair for general day-to-day business, which he then darkens if the Avengers get a call out. Between that, the razor style sunglasses Stark whipped up for him to use in a reverse Clark Kent, and that he generally grows some scrawny facial hair for any covert missions for SHIELD, no one's going to connect Agent Barton with Hawkeye. I assure you, SHIELD is very much on top of keeping those two out of the Avenger spotlight."_

Phil could attest to that. He'd done his own looking whenever Avengers' business made the news or blogs, and the lack of images for either Clint or Natasha – especially when compared to the other four – had been almost distressing. Even the damn Avengers merchandising basically implied the team was only the other Four, despite Thor having not been seen working with them other than that first incident. When the Black Widow or Hawkeye were present on a t-shirt or as one of the multitude of action figures, in no way did their likenesses come close to reality. Especially compared to Stark or Captain Rogers' images.

Someone really doing their homework could find the connections, and others from days long past, but Phil had to assume that SHIELD was not in the habit of using either agent for undercover missions with any frequency any longer. Particularly for anything long term where the other side would have the time to investigate any covert identities. To assume anything else would only lead Phil to madness and a need to quit either this team – or SHIELD in general due to worry.

 _"The team was in Mamaia,"_ Jasper continued, his tone not quite as unruffled as he generally sounded in a normal briefing, just one more way the knowledge that this contact was off the books was being reinforced for Phil.

_"Both Romanoff and Barton were on the ground, working the crowd at the Casino while waiting to make contact with the mark, one Seamus Ritterhaus. The call was to tag Ritterhaus with one of the new biological trackers as well as a nesting bug so we could not only start identifying his common paths around town, but also get some images and audio from the places he frequents. Romanoff had made initial contact but only as the set up."_

"You mean she let Ritterhaus come begging to her," Phil corrected, since that was her usual motus operandi, and she was very, very good at it.

Wearing something that, coupled with an aloof attitude that the beautiful women seemed to be born with, Natasha could draw men to her like bears to honey. No doubt she'd done something to convince Ritterhaus that he had a chance (and to discourage other would-be suitors). She'd then proceed to ignore her mark, letting him ply her with drinks or promises, all the while babbling and giving himself away, just to get her to look at him.

 _"Probably,"_ Jasper hedged, but then he'd never worked with her very much, not on this kind of mission. 

_"However she managed it, while in the middle of him practically confessing that he was about to make a deal with the remnants of Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging  who are still hoping to restore South African apartheid, Romanoff put her fingers across Ritterhaus' lips to silence him as well as mark him, and started spouting some sort of Dutch poetry. In the midst of that which just happened to coincide with Barton's approach, she broke off, shouted "assassin", then pulled out her gun and fucking shot Barton, which was so fucking not the plan according to Jimmy."_

"But Barton is okay?" Phil found himself asking despite Jasper having started their conversation with _no one was dead_.

 _"Yeah."_ And now Jasper just sounded weary, with little of the frustration or anger he'd worked himself into remaining in his voice.

_"But that's the other problem, and why it took four hours for Jimmy to call me."_

That, whatever it was, along with the seven hour time difference.  Phil had little doubt that Jimmy Woo had waiting until he couldn't any longer to call something this big in. He was grateful Woo had also decided to keep it on the QT for now, giving them some time for some sort of explanation or damage control.

_"Jimmy waited for the local hospital to dig the bullet out of Barton's ribs before he stormed in to find out what they hell the two of them had been thinking. Only, in the brief window of time from when the nurse left Barton's side to go input updates to his file and notify the cops that they'd be able to question him soon, Barton rabbited. Not so incidentally, stealing a shirt, leather jacket and some work boots from an orderly's locker on his way out."_

Jesus. Just when Phil didn't think it could worse.

 _"Jimmy did manage to talk the cops around putting a BOLO out, or whatever the Romanians do, on Barton, but he couldn’t do anything about the hunt for Romanoff, since there were so many witnesses who saw her shoot him. Not that I think she looked the same even two minutes after she left everyone behind, "_ Jasper added, almost as an aside to just himself it sounded like.

_"So they are both in the wind and we don't have much time to find them. If they'll let themselves be found. Which is why Jimmy and I thought we needed your team's help. You and May know the two of them the best, you being the most frequent handler and May having been Barton's SO as well as a frequent sparring partner for Romanoff. Then there's also the little business of it being you two who birddogged Barton's last mission in Constanța. You know, when Barton refused to carry out the kill order on the Black Widow and recruited her instead. If anyone can find them – can determine if one or both really have gone rogue – "_

"Dammit, Jasper!"

 _"No, I know, Phil. I know,"_ he said quickly, soothingly, or at least with as much calm and comfort he could muster up. _"I don't really believe it of either of them myself. Only … you were still recovering from being dead during the initial aftermath of the Loki/Chitauri mess. Hell, in some ways, I think those days were actually worse than the ones leading up to and during the Battle. Fury had just directly acted against the WSC and_ their _solution to the alien invasion, when he not only told Stark they'd put a nuke in the air to – "_

"The WSC tried to nuke Manhattan?" Phil interrupted although, even as he was asking, he had to admit to himself that he really wasn't surprised.

The WSC firmly believed in the needs of the many; that it really was a numbers game, though whether that was because they simply counted coup against the bad guys, or they thought they were doing something noble by seeing everything in stark black and white in order to make the hard decisions. He and Nick had spent many long, sleepless nights wondering about that. (Phil figured, given the make-up of countries and philosophies represented by the World Security Council, some members believed one way, some others the second, while a third faction simply enjoyed the power of dictating global policy and do whatever it took to retain that power.)

 _"Yeah, and Fury not only told on them to Stark in time for Stark to divert the payload and redirect it into Chitauri space, before that, Fury had grabbed up a goddamn rocket launcher and shot down the first plane that had taken off on the WSC's orders to keep it from leaving the Helicarrier. The pilot survived Fury's shot, but his job didn't survive Fury's anger,"_ Jasper added with a huff of laughter that quickly dropped away.

_"But anyway, there was that part of the mess, along with Barton having very nearly taken down the Helicarrier totally by himself on Loki's behest, not to mention all the SHIELD personnel and civilians dead or injured during the event. Then not even two full months later – while you were off in fucking Tahiti – the Avengers decided as a group to tell SHIELD and the Council to fuck off. That they were autonomous and answered only to the people of Earth, not to any specific government or agency._

Phil had missed so goddamn much, but it was that last bit, that he think he regretted not being around to see the most.

_"Whether Romanoff or Barton really has gone rogue, or whether they just turned Constanța into a rogue op for some reason again, there are enough people in some pretty damn high places that will be more than happy to think – and sanction – the worst for either of them, Avengers be damned."_

Of course the best things always had the worst consequences.

 _"It's not all that bad,"_ Jasper tried to sound reassuring again. _"For the most part, the rank and file don't hold Barton to blame for what he did under Loki's enthrallment, but there are a few, mostly the ones who never liked the idea of a hick carny with a sketchy past getting recruited as anything other than an informant. Plus, you know as well as I do, that there is still a core group of agents and officials who, even now after all the years and the good she's done for our side, still insist the Black Widow is a double agent sent by the Motherland to destroy the West in general; SHIELD and the US in the specific. To give them their due, certainly the advent of the Avengers would be a big enough reason for her to break cover. I mean, can you imagine what it would mean for her to kill – or turn – Stark, Captain America or, god, the Hulk?"_

Such a scenario didn't bear thinking about, not because it wasn't possible (look how Loki had turned Clint), but because if something like that did happen, SHIELD was in no way prepared to deal with the fallout. Somehow Phil didn't expect the remaining Avengers were any more ready, although he had to think that Clint, if not also Stark and Steve Rogers, had at least spent some time considering ways to stop one of the others should they be unwillingly compromised.

As far as a willing betrayal went, Phil doubted the team could survive that, even if they did manage to stop the traitor.

"I assume you haven't told any of this to Stark or Rogers?"

 _"Hell, no,"_ Jasper answered emphatically. _"Only you, I, and Jimmy know they're in the wind. Sure, Stark has promised he understands there are boundaries, that he won't interfere when either of those two, or Rogers agree to take an op on SHIELD's behalf, but who knows what_ his _line is in defining interference."_

Phil had little doubt that Stark at least kept some sort of passive surveillance on his teammates, for basically the same reasons he was fairly certain that Stark knew that Phil was alive. Once someone came within Tony Stark's personal space and established even a somewhat antagonistic relationship with the genius, Stark _couldn't_ – physically, mentally, or emotionally – stay out of their business.  Keeping tabs on the few people he trusted and liked, as well as the ones who acted against him had been ingrained in Stark when he'd been just a boy after all, if not as direct advice from his father, then from simply observing his father's own interactions with people. Not keeping a close enough eye on the man Stark had seen as a substitute father figure as well as being his business partner, would have only reinforced that tendency after Stark had learned that Obadiah Stane had been the one behind having Stark kidnapped and nearly killed so that Stane could get control of Stark Industries as well as the Stark billions.

Of course, Phil also didn't doubt that Clint and Natasha were just as aware of Stark's propensities, and that they hadn't found some way to slip his leash when they felt the need.  Just as they'd done with SHIELD's leash often enough that finally Fury had acquiesced and pulled the subQs and trackers, since – at least up until this point – the two of them always came back.

"Send me what you have on their mission, along with a contact number for Jimmy that isn't on SHIELD's radar. If he can pull footage from the casino starting with their arrival on scene and up to the point where Natasha fled, get that included too. I assume Natasha was handling the biological tracer. Is that why she touched Ritterhaus' lips?"

_"If so, it was too fleeting and didn't take."_

"Then did Barton manage to plant the nesting bug?"

Jasper gave a little chuckle, part in admiration, Phil thought, but also self-directed.

 _"Yeah, he did,"_ he answered. _"Hawkeye never misses. I should have seen it. If they were going rogue, why would she have waited to give him the chance and why would he have bothered? I'll point that out to Jimmy too, although he might have figured it out on his own by now. Still think we should wait on bringing SHIELD in, though. The haters aren't going to see it like that. And since the rest of the Avengers are about as subtle as a hippo wearing a tutu while dancing the Macarena, we should keep them in the dark just the same. Unless you end up needing Stark's resources."_

"I think I can manage without," Phil told him, able to relax finally, just a little, now that he was sure the other two weren't going to report his former assets had gone rogue, even if Phil didn't find them before SHIELD demanded an update. He was still facing the need to track down two people who were very good at remaining hidden while at the same time managing his own team that, while they might not be hippos, were still pretty clumsy when it came to dancing. He also wasn't going to point out that, actually, letting Clint close enough to plant a bug could have been Natasha's way or Barton's suggestion to delay and distract SHIELD, by giving them what they wanted, had she or they indeed gone rogue.

Maybe it wasn't fair – maybe there was a tiny part of Phil that wasn't any better than Jasper's haters – but he found it much easier to think if Natasha had gone rogue, Clint hadn't been read into the plan. Not because either of them wouldn't consider shooting the other if that was the only way to make the play, but because he was certain that Clint saw his work for SHIELD as redemption and that not even Natasha Romanoff could have convinced him anything was worth the way SHIELD would hunt them down, no matter how long it took. She had to know that too; to know that Clint would try to talk her around whatever she might have found worth returning to a life on the run for, and so she wouldn't have bothered. Because the other thing Phil knew with a certainty about his former assets, rogue or not, Clint would follow Natasha and have her back, on the slimmest chance she'd been compromised or was being blackmailed; that he could bring her back safely. The fact that she'd done the same for him, after Loki, didn't factor into that truth whatsoever.

"Do you know the poem Natasha was reciting before she fled?"

He preferred the scenario where neither of them had gone rogue. Natasha in that instance and in being who she was, would have found a way to leave some sort of clue for Clint it not for SHIELD. The poem was definitely not part of her normal repertoire.

 _"Neither of us recognized it. I think I mentioned it was done in Dutch? Jimmy remembers something about a soul and a gray stone …"_ He paused for a moment and Phil could hear the sounds of keyboard tapping.

_"For all that she was speaking to Ritterhaus, she was still speaking pretty damn quietly, and the security set-up didn't get every word. But I've got a transcript of what they think they heard. Do you want it in the Dutch or translated into English?"_

"Dutch is not one of my languages, but it might be one of May's. I don’t remember."

Which would be disturbing at any other time, but Phil had more things to think about that just one more missing memory.

"Read me the English right now, please, but send the original transcript along with everything else.  And a copy of the audio file. Natasha could have changed a word or two, used a wrong tense but on purpose, only a translator might hear what they expect if they know the poem themselves."

_"Assuming she was doing anything with it beyond weaving Ritterhaus under her spell."_

"Yes, assuming that," Phil said, with only a little bite. 

Too many senior agents at SHIELD had been uncomfortable, leery – or out and out scared – to work with Natasha or Clint on anything like a regular basis. Jasper hadn't quite been in the category, but he still hadn't been called in to oversee them very often, that had been Phil's job. So Jasper didn't know that Natasha Romanoff wasted no movement, word, or breath when she was on the job. Phil knew the poetry meant something.

And even if it had been meant for Clint, she'd also know someone else would be scouring it for clues. She probably wouldn't have assumed that someone would be Phil; while he thought she trusted Jimmy Woo as much as she trusted any SHIELD handler, she shouldn't have known Woo was on Jasper's inner circle of emergency contacts, or have had any expectation that she'd have a window to operate without SHIELD hunting her. So Phil wasn't expecting it to be something he'd recognize to instantly figure out her plan, even in knowing that Clint didn't know Dutch either, and would most likely need to do his own research and translation.

Jasper ignored the temper, just as he'd ignored the poorly hidden concern and fear. He might not know the full extent of Phil feeling compromised when it came to those two, but he also wouldn't care. Jasper Sitwell trusted Phil Coulson; knew that Phil trusted Clint and Natasha unconditionally; and knew that to not have brought Phil in on this would have irreparably damaged something, regardless of the consequences that would rear their heads when Fury got wind of what was going on.

 _"Okay, what I've got is_ am the soul of a grey stone. _Something, something, something, something_ until they _something_ me up, somebody with _something and something_ carefully _something. There's more, but Jimmy couldn't make it out and, frankly, didn't bother to take the time to see if he could with a second hearing. We'll leave that up to you and May. Hopefully it's enough for your pet hacker to figure out the rest of it."_

Fuck. Phil didn't need the transcript, or the Skye to google what they did have. Soul of a grey stone was enough to recognize the poem as one of Natasha's favorite, written by a remarkable Estonian author and poet by the name of Jaan Kaplinski. Translated, the full poem went:

_I have no soul._  
 _I myself am the soul of a grey stone._  
 _I have slept here until they woke me up,_  
 _somebody with a chisel and hammer carefully tooling the surplus away._  
 _But I am not finished._  
 _This me is something in-between the rock and some words,_  
 _the words something in-between me and some wordless thoughts_  
 _in the heart of the grey rock where time has no place,_  
 _where place has no name._  


Unfortunately it didn't give Phil the answer he was looking for. Even to him, it sounded like an apology. Natasha had told them about it years ago, as part of an answer to how she'd felt in those first days between her life with the Red Room and with SHIELD.

Adrift and alone.

Unfinished.

"Go back to sleep, Jasper. My teams here and we'll be in the air in five. I'll call back in four hours with a sit rep. Once we've had a chance to look over the scene and come up with a plan."

Even if he hadn't heard the rumble of the ramp being lowered back down the admit the rest of his team, Fitz and Simmons both sounded almost giddy for being the ones to pull the rest out, even if it really hadn't been a rescue.

 _"I know that you never would, but don't forget that Nick – that_ Marcus – _is one of numbers on these phones. I'll leave that decision up to you, but you know you can call it, that it won't be Director Fury who answers. If you keep sending Hand updates on your current mission, she's not going to even notice you've moved on from Sevastopol, and I'll come up with something to keep Blake occupied when I go in. Jimmy's going to call in to HQ around ten our time, assuming he doesn't hear from you first to stop him. He's prepared to say that things conspired to work against them and they'll look for another opportunity to mark Ritterhaus. I think that at least the first few hours, Blake's going to bask in the thought that Strike Force Delta failed before cottons on to the idea that someone might be feeding him bullshit. So your soft window is about eight hours, with the hard one being eighteen before he goes tattling to Fury or higher."_

"I know Blake was acting pretty pompous when we were dealing with the Chitauri helmet, but has he really gone that far, that you think he's a plant by the Council?" Phil asked instead of commenting – instead of dwelling on whether to bring Fury in on this or not. He hadn't realized that Blake might be one of the problems.

Sure, he didn't really like the other senior agent, but that was more because Blake lacked imagination and had no true understanding of what it was like being out in the field. In having a team or the way that sometimes either of those things changed the way you looked at procedures and rules. He was the man Fury had put in charge of the Chituari clean-up, tech and weapons, however, so at some point Nick had to have trusted him to do a pretty big job, albeit one that had the potential to backfire just like the Phase Two, tesseract-based weaponry, if Blake was answering to two masters.

Nick was the type to play it deep after all, to take chances and give someone more than enough rope to hang themselves before he let loose the trap door. And if Nick had found out there were pilots on board his helicarrier that answered directly to the Council instead of the proper chain of command, he'd be doing everything in his power to find anyone else who might be a Council lackey. 

At least that would be Maria's job and not his, ferrying out whether Blake answered to the wrong boss. Phil simply had to work with the man, assuming there was more Chitauri artifacts out there that SHIELD had missed confiscating. There properly were, and that was exactly the type of thing Phil's team had been formed to deal with, but no matter whether Blake was stooge or simply too stolid an agent, Blake would be sending his own people out first on any credible rumor. For Phil's team to get involved, it would most likely only be by accident, just like the first time.

 _"I think he's an ass, who is always on the lookout to ingratiate himself,"_ came Jasper's answer. _"He thought he was going to get your job, both with the Initiative, and as Fury's man in the field. When neither of those things came to pass, he started looking for new ways to advance himself but, no, I don't think he'd actually go so far as to offering himself up to the Council. They have a way of discarding tools that lose their usefulness."_

Phil had seen that all too often. He started to say goodbye, but Jasper wasn't finished.

 _"Still Blake does enjoy finding ways to cheapen your reputation, and that would include write-ups or reprimands against your former assets and trainees like Akela, which good job if I didn't say so before,"_ he added without taking a breath.

_"SHIELD is pretty much split when it comes to the Avengers. Not about the good that they do, but whether they should be under SHIELD's aegis or not. Blake's one of those who thinks they're all loose cannons and I think he resents that Rogers, Barton, and Romanoff continue to be allowed to work both sides."_

"I'll keep that in mind and thanks for the heads up." Phil hung up at that point, because urgency or not, Jasper had a tendency to prattle on, especially when he was nervous about something. Phil had neither the time nor the stamina to waste, not when he needed his own reassurances that things weren't about to go Defcon Two, or possibly even One.

He sat there for a minute, half expecting the phone to ring again, but not surprised when it didn't since Jasper was aware of his own failings.  It was almost too much to take in, the imputations as well as the implications. And all of it was wrapped in memories of one of the worst – and best – days of Phil's life.

He couldn't deny that Clint had become a better person as well as a better agent after bringing Natasha in. But up until then, there had always been the thought, somewhere in the back of Phil's mind, that he had been the one to help Clint find and better himself. That he'd been the one to _fix_ Clint Barton's brokenness.  It had taken no more than a week to see that that thought had been pure vanity and hopeful foolishness, however. Those two had been – were – beautiful together, as people, as agents, as partners. They were truly two halves of one soul, and Phil would have had to be significantly more arrogant; would have to be a monster to be willing to come between them afterward. If he was being completely truthful to himself, it was that reason that had made it easy for Phil to go along with Fury's directive about his resurrection. Because he wanted to be that monster.

Because while getting to watch the two of them was a close to perfection as he'd probably ever reach, not having to be around them was so much easier than feeling his soul burn from the watching.

The knock on his door could not have come at a better time. Phil let himself have one more tiny moment of self-pity before giving a huff of internal imprecation and smoothing his face into its normal appearance of composure. Mission first, maybe now more than any other time, save for when Loki had subsumed Clint's will.

"Come in."

********

Constanța was undeniably a beautiful city. One of Europe's gems, Romania's oldest, and mostly deserving of both its tourists' and native's fondness, as well as its nickname of the Romanian Riviera. Once they'd gotten past Skye's inevitable Dracula jokes, as well as Simmons' explanation of how the vampire myth might have come into being, the team had settled down and settled into the new mission as well as Phil could have hoped, given he'd left out almost all of the details.  There was a part of Phil that even appreciated the levity and discourse they'd offered, as a welcome distraction from his still melancholic thoughts; at least enough so that he didn't come down too hard on the team for letting themselves be distracted in turn.

He appreciated more, however, one of the references Skye had dug up about Natasha's poem.

He'd known about the Wall Poetry Project, not that he'd ever visited either Lieden or the newest city to partake in this form of celebration of European diversity and now housed a rendering of the poem on the Estonian Embassy, Sofia, Bulgaria. (The closest he'd ever come to Sofia was when he'd been stationed in Kosovo, or from several SHIELD missions in Serbia as well as Macedonia and here in Romania, though mostly in Bucharest, which was one of his favorite cities in the world.)  It wasn't the location of the poem, however, that matter, not beyond the name anyway, and Phil had to admit he'd been quite relieved to hear it.

Sofia was also a woman's name. The name, in fact, of a woman who'd tried to kill Natasha a few years back, so that she could take Natasha's place as the new Black Widow. Phil wasn't sure if the poem had been Natasha's way of saying Sofia hadn't really been killed as they'd thought, or if she'd simply recognized another daughter of the Red Room who might be out looking to become the next Black Widow.  While knowing that was important, knowing that Natasha had had a motive for shooting Clint as well as disappearing mid mission was more important.  Phil was well aware that these would be widows had no compulsion about collateral damages, and that Clint, as the Black Widow's partner, would be either a target used to coerce Natasha into letting them close, or as the one death that might make the legendary Black Widow loose her cool. And, therefore, her edge.

By shooting Clint herself, she'd saved him from something worse. Or at least that's how Phil figured she'd looked at it. And he couldn't find himself disagreeing, although he had to wonder if Natasha had fully thought out the consequences for when Clint did finally catch up to her. While those both agreed that the ghosts of their past were their own business to deal with, the two of them had proven surprisingly stubborn and bull-headed about actually letting their partner go it alone. Especially if the abandonment had been done to save one another from something just like this incident.

Natasha would be lucky if Clint didn't shoot her back, quite possibly during the mission instead of waiting until after, so that Natasha had to bring Clint in to finish things.

Theirs might be a dysfunctional relationship, but it was surprisingly functional anyway; at least when it came down to the mechanical end of things. Emotionally they were both still train wrecks, but then all of the Avengers were walking luggage compartments of baggage, and with that many broken pieces, it was statistically impossible that some of them didn't fit together anyway.

Phil still wasn't quite ready to tell Woo to call this in as a new threat, but he certainly was prepared to give his justifications should Hand, Blake or even Fury call his hand from this point on.

Having figured out Natasha's motivations and at least the range of the threat if not the actual identity (Skye was currently checking on whether Sofia's remains had been properly identified, medically verified and then collaborated by SHIELD itself), that just left them with needing to find any of the three players since finding any one would eventually bring together everyone.

"Do we assume Barton's expecting at least one of us to be chasing after him or not?" Melinda asked quiet enough that no one noticed even now that they had company as she ghosted up to Phil's side where he stood at the railing watching the rest of their team go about their business on the lower level in preparation for heading out.

They'd landed, almost an hour ago, but Phil didn't feel they were ready to leave quite yet.

"Because if we do, you and I know the route to get started with and you're just stalling," she continued, in her relentless, _pitiless_ , manner.

"Doesn't matter if he does or not, we have to check them out," Phil responded, all emotion leeched from his voice, just as she had to have expected. He'd been the on, after all, who'd shown her how to be so enigmatic.

"And yes, I am stalling," he admitted perversely pleased to see just the tiniest of jerks from her as he said something she _hadn't_ been expecting. 

If only she knew.

No, she was going to know, because he was going to tell her.  He had to tell _someone_ , now that he'd finally figured it out (admitted it to) himself. Certainlyshe was the most deserving. Plus, she _needed_ to know he was compromised going into this mission, since they were fooling themselves in thinking they despite what they had figured out, they weren't going in blind.

"I fell in love with him."

"How long ago?" Melinda asked, surprised indeed to ask such a personal question, although she also took it completely in stride. "If It's been recent, been after Tahiti, you know that it's just as likely you're reaching out for something you feel you've left behind," she still cautioned. "And wasn't there a cellist? Magdalene?"

"Mags, yeah. She's someone else who hasn't been cleared to know I'm still alive. But that's okay. While Mags was pretty special, was someone I could have probably been happy with even if I never really loved her, she wasn't The One, just someone." He hung his head in the realization that he sounded like a greeting card, or a Lifetime movie. He'd even made the finger quotes, for heaven's sake.

Melinda just gave him a quiet laugh and settled down next to him, resting her head on her arms as they leaned against the railing. Ready to hear anything he wanted to tell her.

God, there was so much.

"I think I fell for Barton – Clint – pretty much right after Bahrain, if you can believe that. At the time I never hated people more, I fell in love."

He ignored her intake of breath. They'd never discussed Bahrain, hadn't even debriefed together and instead had stuck to the terse, bald facts that made up the after action reports. Phil thought now that that had been a mistake, that maybe he could have helped her heal all that much sooner, but it was water – and blood – under the bridge. Just drawing her out of records had been a start, and he made note that he shouldn't just leave it at that, but it wasn't something he was prepared to deal with right now. Because if he stopped his confession here, even for something that important, Phil knew he'd never bring it up again.

"Like you, I needed time getting over how the mission fell out," he tried to explain. "Over what happened to you probably more than over what had happened to the agents who'd died."

He could at least give her a little right now.

"For some damn reason, _junior_ agent Barton _demanded_ me as his handler for a stupid, cakewalk mission and Nick, the fucker, has always been one of those who believes that you have to get right back up on the horse."

Melinda nodded, even if she'd never had the full Marcus "Nick" Fury experience.  Some things were easy to take on faith; Fury being a right bastard if it was for the good of the mission, being right at the top of the list.

"So my psych evals got doctored and I got sent back out. Hell, I went eagerly, so damn ready to kick the cocky little bastard's ass and show him that being an agent meant so much more than being able to hit a target.  Plus the mission was in Bucharest, which you  know I adore …"

Another nod.

"It all went to shit, of course, because assumed calk walks always do. But this time it was also because I was much more interested in taking the famous Hawkeye down a peg than in keeping an eye on the real target."

"He ended up coming home with three bullets in him after that mission," Melinda growled at him, quietly of course, so that the four below still didn't have a clue about what was going on above them.

Phil supposed some sort of lesson should probably be drawn up so they didn't stay so oblivious when it mattered.

"He never told me you were his partner on that mission," Melinda continued to rant. "He just said it had been one of those things and I was so disgusted with SHIELD, with life, with everything at that point, that I never bothered to read through the AARs. That little shit," she said this time with something like admiration in her voice.

It was Phil's turn to nod, both at the memory and the sentiment.

"He never told anyone it was my fault. Somehow, he managed to give his debriefing to Overwatch before I could, leaving me with the choice of stepping up and admitting fault but also calling him a liar at best and too emotionally involved, which would have marked him as unsuited for becoming a specialist and pretty much ended any advancement for him at SHIELD.  Which I couldn't allow to happen. Not when there was so much potential."

Phil _had_ fessed up to his role in getting Barton shot to Nick, their first night back at Central, which had been a week later so that Barton had been able to come back to the States with him instead of being stuck in Ramstein with only the wounded soldiers that had been coming in from the US's operations in the Middle East for company.  Clint had been a soldier himself before SHIELD, a Marine, but that had been one more reason Phil hadn't felt he could abandon him there on the Air Force base, even if there might have been someone he'd known getting treatment there at the same time. They all had their share of nightmares from missions long before they'd joined SHIELD and Phil didn't want to be the cause of more for Clint than the ones Phil's arrogance and inattention had undoubtedly birthed.

Phil had certainly earned his share of them after that mission. Ones worse than those from Bahrain, since the mission failure had been his fault.

"When I asked him why he covered for me like that, he simply said that he was glad to have disproved the rumors that I was a robot, and that he looked forward to working with me again." Phil shook his head; saw that Melinda did the same, for all the same reasons. 

Clint Barton was SHIELD's most unconventional agent; arrogant, prickly, and so god damn cocky that even Jasper had his difficulties working with him despite Jasper getting along with nearly everyone, and absolutely everyone in return thinking Jasper was a teddy bear.  (Hell, even after Simmons had tazed him, Jasper had asked her out for coffee.) Clint was also one of the most dedicated – and loyal – people you could ever hope to have on your side. Loki had been too damn right when he'd said Clint had heart and picked him to lead his covert operations against SHIELD. And that had to have eaten Clint up, afterward. Not the people who couldn't forgive him, but the ones who had. Because Phil doubted very much that Clint had really ever forgiven himself.

"He then he demanded that I smuggle him in some ice cream, and a Gameboy, so he could keep his reflexes up while he was banned from training," Phil continued his story to fill the silence as well as to finish unburdening his soul. "Like he wasn't banned from the range because he couldn’t physically hold a gun, much less his bow, and had months of physical therapy ahead of him, but because he was being punished.  He said that if I didn't, he was going to tell everyone that I actually _was_ a robot; that he'd seen the wires when I'd used them to electrocute O'Neill before ordering our evac. And then he threatened to tear up the Captain America card he'd just bought, whose pick-up was the real reason he'd manufactured the assignment in Bucharest in the first place – just so he could lord over having it while I didn't – instead of giving it to me as a housewarming gift, I think he was calling it, for our new partnership.  That that was something people, _agents_ , did. It was the rarest one, the number five card of the original set. Cap and his best friend Bucky, from before the war."

"I got a plant, an African violet, after we lasted a month and I didn't demand he be reassigned to another supervisory officers," Melinda offered in remembered fondness. "I killed it within another month, and he bought me another one. Said they'd been his mother's favorite, and was the only plant he really knew outside of roses, which he didn't think would be appropriate."

"Why in god's name did you never tell him?" she then asked after a long minute of silence where they both just let the memories come. Her tone was a hell of a lot more gentle than Phil deserved.

He shrugged. "I figured SHIELD would better profit from a working partnership between us than a physical one; I was a handler, he was an asset under my command; I'm eight years older than him… pick one. I used them all, plus a few more over that first year. Then, well, then came Natasha."

Melinda twisted her head to look over at him. "Phil, you do know they never had the kind of relationship, right?"

"Of course they did. Hell, I know we both walked in on the two of them fucking, not just back on base but during missions. They were doing it all the time. Clint's only casual fucks are with men, to scratch the itch. He practically worships women, does worship Natasha. What those two have can never be casual."

Melinda was shaking her head again, but this time it wasn't in fond remembrance. Nor was it over something Phil was prepared to be corrected over. Only Melinda wouldn't spare him, just because they were friends. It was _because_ they were friends that neither of them pulled their punches when it came to the truth.

"I agree that it is anything but casual, but that's because what they have isn't definable by any normal set of parameters or social convention."

At least she turned her head back to watch below instead of adding the visual to the knowledge that Phil's worldview was crumbling.

"Natasha has her own itches, which she fills with women," she went on. "Because Natasha _can't_ ever trust a man that way, not after the way those men from the Red Room molded and used her."

Being friends didn't mean the punches didn't hurt; only that there was someone there to help you recover from the pain.

"Sometimes I think there was one guy, probably someone back in the Red Room that she worked with, that she was and is still in love with, but men are strictly a job with her, a means to an end," Melinda added with a tone of despair. "Including Clint."

Phil made an involuntary noise of protest

"It's not sordid or exploitive between them," she said this time with reassurance. "Clint knows. And he encourages it because she's his _partner_. They offer safety and comfort to one another, along with most of those other things both of them deny needing or wanting. They sleep together, yes, and fucked during those first few years of her coming in to SHIELD, but I doubt they do anymore. It started because she needed someone she could trust unconditionally and because he needed someone who _wanted_ him. Because they were both broken, but together they almost make up something whole."

"They're twins, not lovers," Phil let himself realize. He'd not been prepared to know that before; to know that he'd used the thought of the two of them together as a way out of stepping up to his own feelings and instead give himself up to Fury and SHIELD.

Because it was easier to blame the job and nonexistent regulations instead of blaming himself. Or, at least, it had been.

Before he'd died.

Melinda was now nodding – and looking relieved that Phil had stopped lying to himself.

"I think the sex was just an easier way for both of them to relate to one another and to deal with, over the social cues and messy emotions that neither of them had ever been shown nor taught how to manage. Plus, it was fun, and it had the added benefit of all of the rumors. Very few other agents were willing to piss off Hawkeye by hitting on his girlfriend."

So true, even though Natasha was both more ruthless and, frankly, meaner than Clint. No doubt Clint would have gone along with the idea, even if the two of them had never had sex, just to take the piss out of the kind of guy who could only ever see Natasha's body and sweet face.

"So which one of them told you all of that?"

Melinda smiled. "Both of them, though not in so many words. I'm not sure they understand it any better than you let yourself think about it before today. Those missing cues and lack of childhood role models again. Natasha came to trust me through Clint, then found she enjoyed my company even without Clint. We … dated for a few months before deciding the sex wasn't as fun as beating up on one another. Fortunately, we waited to decide that after one long, glorious weekend, all _three_ of us together in Malta – "

"No, Melinda. There are some truths just too painful to hear," he interrupted quickly, despite there being a part of him that desperately did want to hear about it all.

"At least until you have some of your own so we can share," she agreed, which hadn't been what Phil had meant at all.

Or maybe it had been.

"So this time, you're going to man up and tell him, right?" Melinda continued right along. But then she immediately started shaking her head. "No, let me rephrase that. This time you _are_ going to tell him how you feel. Or _I_ will. Including all of the awkward, painful and _stupid_ parts."

"Let's worry first about getting Natasha and Clint back before worrying about my manliness – or lack thereof – and what the future might hold in store."

"If that's what you need to tell yourself to keep things together right now, fine. But I am serious, Phil," she said as she turned her head toward him once more. "I'm not above pulling Natasha into it if I have to."

"Fine."

"Good. So how are we going to play this?" she asked with a gesture below as she rose to her full height. "Split up since there is so much ground to cover?"

Phil didn't need to look over her way to know she'd put her implacable mask back on; that she wasn't going to let him stall the mission any longer either.

"Splitting up would be quicker."

"Are you thinking about just the two of us, or are you going to send Ward and Skye out against someone who thinks she can beat the Black Widow; the Widow herself; and the world's greatest marksman?"

"Ward would get chewed up and, if he was lucky, get spit out again. Only I'm not sure he's ready to own up to that," Phil admitted.

"Are any of us?" Melinda pointed out, knowing as he did that if they were wrong about the Sofia part of it and either Barton or Romanoff were truly working against SHIELD, those would be the two who were most likely to walk away, not the new Team Coulson.

Phil could almost live with that. Certainly better than the thought of Clint or Natasha going against _one another_ with intent. No matter which one of them won, they'd both – they'd all – lose.

"We should consider, however, that if Skye is working with Ward, her presence might save him from getting his ass kicked," he said instead.

"Maybe. But only with two of the three, at best."

Despite her maybe, Melinda was shaking her head.

"Someone fresh out of the New Red Room or someone who's looking for revenge, neither new or old Sofia are going to be concerned about collateral damage. She might even relish it. That's how I'd bring the Black Widow out," Melinda then revealed. "Nothing like a dead body to get someone's attention."

Just as long as Clint's wasn't one of them, not that Phil could admit that aloud, even now, if only so he didn't sound like a monster.

"That's because you know who Natasha's become, not just who she was. Any current or former Red Room operative isn't going to believe another former Red Room operative would care enough about people she didn't know, not even one who's become an Avenger," Phil countered. "Because they can't ever imagine a future where they'd have that care themselves. Plus, the last thing they can afford is calling enough attention or causing enough trouble that the locals or Interpol get spooked and call in the Avengers. Or even SHIELD."

"I didn't mean us," he added with a scowl in response to Melinda's perfectly arched brow. "I was talking about SHIELD deploying a full search and destroy team. We should expect our Black Widow wannabe has someone on the inside who'd tell her if SHIELD gets permission to send a Strikeforce in."

"As opposed to the one already in place that isn't us?"

Melinda switched which brow got raised this time.

Phil nodded, even though Melinda's whole body, not just her tone, was seeped in sarcasm.

"Covert is the operative word for Delta at the moment and you know very well that permissions for those kinds of missions are completely different than for ones whose sole purpose is to leave only bodies behind," he couldn't help scolding, just a little, since he didn't need her still challenging him on this part of things.

"Still, an inside man might explain how old or new Sofia found out Natasha was in country," he finished up with. "And why she decided to make a move that Natasha had the opportunity to figure out and counter."

"I'll concede that," Melinda offered, along with one of her little, barely there smiles. "Since the hows and whys really only matter in the after action reports. And I agree that any current, so-called collateral damage will actually be carefully controlled and calculated damage. So that means we are leaving the kids behind, right?"

"Right. But we're not going out against any of those three alone either. Do you want Ward or Woo?"

That earned him a sigh.

"I'd better take Jimmy. Ward might be afraid of me, but he still sees us as equals in the full scheme of things, whereas he acknowledges that you're the boss. Chasing after three of the world's deadliest assassins is not the time for someone to start questioning field commands."

Phil agreed. "Yet another reason to leave Skye, Fitz and Simmons behind, and the Bus locked up tight."

"That's going to be easier done if you give them something equally important to work on," Melinda reminded him.

Another thing he agreed with. "Yeah, like getting started on the files we just recovered from a Ten Rings information cache."

He got a bigger smile for that suggestion.

"It would go a long way to keeping Hand appeased, too," she added, before her smile dropped way to her normal, impassive expression. "But Skye will never forgive you if you let two Avengers get away after things are over, without having first introduced her. So don't think you can just stand back and observe and then slink quietly away."

He'd never admit to questioning whether there was any chance of doing just that; for the moment he was too busy being thankful while pondering her warning, that neither of the nearby Avengers were Tony Stark. Fitz or Simmons would be unbearably star-struck during such a meeting, but if Skye got within ten miles of Stark – or ever figured out that Phil had had some kind of friendship with the man before Loki, Phil would never hear the end of it. Not to mention that he might find himself losing a valuable asset and someone on her way to also becoming someone important to him.

Stark could offer Skye everything she might need as a hacker and an activist, up to and including unfettered and full access to SHIELD data storage, should he take note of her skills and enthusiasm and decide she was a good fit at SI. Or if he simply decided to fuck with Phil for going along with Fury and keeping the news of his resurrection from the Avengers.

Even if Phil had been mistaken about the nature of his relationship to Stark, and Stark really hadn't cared whether Phil had lived or died beyond him being another tragic victim to Loki, Phil and Pepper had crafted a growing friendship, so Pepper would have grieved. And Stark cared for her above anything else. Meaning, either on his own behalf or for Pepper's, Skye getting stolen away was a real possibility. And one that Phil couldn't think of how to counter, especially right now, while Skye was still curtailed by her monitoring bracelet. 

"Shit, Phil, I was only teasing about Skye," Melinda spoke up with a nudge, shoulder against shoulder. "Like you said, we've got enough to worry about in the next few hours to go borrowing trouble against the future. It's time to go find our people."

Yes, it really was.

***** 

Why Phil – or any of them, really – had ever worried that the Black Widow and Hawkeye would need any help to deal with a Russian assassin and potential super-soldier –

Obviously it hadn't been easy, as evidenced by Clint no longer being the only one with a current bullet hole in him, along with an assortment of newly purpling bruises; scrapes; and what looked like a potentially broken nose on Natasha's part; some busted knuckles and maybe a finger or two on Clint's; plus the beginnings of blackened eyes on the both of them. But both of them were also still standing (if also leaning against each other and perhaps propping each other up), and the new Sofia was not just on the ground, but no longer breathing, given her unblinking eyes and the angle of her neck.

Melinda, no doubt, would be able to look at the details of the battle and the defensive as well as offensive wounds and determine which of the two of them had killed this Sofia, but Phil didn't care. It was enough that one of them had, that they were safe for another day at least, from both the outside world and from SHIELD.

"Do we back away, sir?" Ward asked from his position behind Phil, covering the rest of the street though he'd turned his head enough that Phil had heard him while still speaking softly enough the other two had not. 

He and Ward were on a third-story abutment, overlooking the scene of the confrontation, and it was not lost on Phil that this was the same street that Clint had first caught up to the Black Widow, although they'd been down a few blocks from their current position all those years ago.

By all rights he and Ward should just walk away. Keep Fury's secret.  It certainly was obvious that Strike Force Delta didn't need back up.

But that didn't mean that they couldn't use some help, and not only by keeping local law enforcement out of their way.

"Stay here and cover our sixes," Phil ordered before starting back toward the stairs while pulling his SHIELD issued phone out. "We don't know for sure that she was working alone."

He didn't really think she had had a partner, although the first Sofia had at least been using Frampton and Starodoub as cover when she'd taken her shot at becoming the Black Widow. After the failure of that first attempt, Phil didn't know if the Red Room was now actively discouraging or _encouraging_ their operatives to take out the Red Room's most obvious symbol of failure, but he was pretty sure that at least the first couple of new Sofias would insist on going it alone; otherwise they'd not really have earned the right and honor of being called Black Widow.

A conundrum for another day, or at least another hour, since he'd not yet had the chance to call Melinda or Woo and let them know he and Ward had caught up to their missing assets. He'd let Woo deal with the _Poliţia Română_ , and if Clint or Natasha refused to let Phil help in getting them off the street or giving them care, he could at least tell them they needn't worry about the body or over being arrested. But that wasn't something he was going to do from three stories – from any stories – above them, no matter that Melinda would think him crazy for walking up on two adrenalin-crashing assassins who already had reasons to hold a grudge.

The only thing Phil didn't have squared away by the time he let his footfalls sound loud enough that they'd hear him well before he stepped into their field of view, was a first aid kit. Or what he could possibly say to them. He'd faced down more guns, bigger guns, not to mention a fucking demi-god, yet in this moment as both turned to face him, he was a scared as he ever remembered feeling. Including Budapest.

"I hope you brought a fucking field dressing with you, sir. Your pet sniper is too young to see Tasha's tits and I already had to sacrifice my own shirt to the Molotov cocktail that got this bitch out of her car and onto the street where we could get to her."

"I've got two if you count my undershirt, plus my jacket," Phil replied, his voice remarkably calm given the tremor he could feel through his hands. "Whatever you need. How bad is the wound, Agent Romanoff?"

Natasha never downplayed her injuries, because she never let them keep her from completing her task unless she'd fallen unconscious, and then it was only temporary if she decided to go AMA.

"A through and through just below my hip – hell, practically through my ass. No bone, though; no femoral artery.  And I think I'd like to use the lining of your jacket. It's natural silk, right?"

And half the cost of the jacket, which she knew as well, but there was no one at the subtle stab than Natasha Romanoff.

"The current color of your hair," he told her in a flight of fancy – or shock – even when he hadn't been in a fight or injured. While he didn't know if Woo had been right about how quickly she'd gone from blonde to black, she definitely didn't look Scandinavian any longer.

Phil didn't hesitate in removing his jacket. He'd wreck any or all of his suits to keep one of his people alive. To have Natasha willing to talk to him again.

Nor did he flinch when Clint pulled out a knife as long as his hand from under his jacket, though Phil did signal Ward not to shoot, just in case. He was pretty certain he and Melinda had kept the whole had they gone rogue or not thing from the others, since by the time he was ready to read his team in, he'd convinced himself the situation was exactly as it turned out.

The knife was Natasha's, he noted distantly, not that Clint would carry one himself that couldn't cut a silk thread falling on it. But Clint preferred smaller knives, save for a single K-bar, since he was more apt to throw his blades than charge somebody with one in hand.  Had he been carrying any sort of weapon when he'd first gone into the Casino, it had undoubtedly been taken from him before he'd been transported to the hospital, and in that kind of situation, where security, both public and private, overt and hidden abounded, Natasha and Clint generally preferred to go in clean and just pick up what they needed from the people around them.

 They watched in silence as Phil cut out two big patches of the raw silk, for use as matting clothes on either side of Natasha's leg. The silence continued as he began cutting a two-inch switchback of several turns to wrap around and hold the pads into place. Keeping his own silence, he handed over the bandages, never presuming he had the right to finish treating her, not because he'd have to kneel and practically touch her crotch (he'd done more, seen more, with the both of the over the years when it came to bandages or stitches or simply helping one of the them clean up, just as he'd bared all or worse to them in return – just another part of the job) but because letting someone that close to her only happened when she trusted that someone, something Phil had thrown away.

Instead he began cutting smaller strips of silk with the intent to turn them over to be used to split Clint's broken fingers together. Hand injuries of any kind were especially threatening, given Clint's prodigiousness with the bow, even if they weren't ones on his dominant hand. So the quicker treated, the quicker Clint might recover.

In addition to wrapping Natasha's leg, Clint took advantage of her dropping her guard to tug her head down as he got back to his feet, checking and then resetting her nose with no warning, which earned him a fist to his side that dropped him down on his ass with a bigger howl than she'd given.  No doubt she'd gone for the same side she'd shot him in.  Phil simply ripped out the rest of his jacket's lining and handed over the wad so Natasha could one more deal with that bleeding, before crouching down alongside Clint and wait expectantly for Clint to lift his jacket away from his side.

As Clint had already mentioned, he was no longer wearing a shirt underneath, so Phil could clearly see the damage, both initial and new. Fortunately it didn't look like any of the stitches had been popped by Natasha's hit, but it was going to now bruise and be tender from that as well as from the earlier trauma of the shooting. If Phil noted and fluttered his fingers over a couple scars new in the last eighteen months from when he'd last seen Clint, well, this was an emotional moment for them all.

"So are you going to show us yours?" Clint asked, living up to his smartass reputation.

While the piss and vinegar was there, that wasn't the only emotion that Phil heard.

Or hoped he was hearing.

"I'd rather not. My pet sniper is too young to see just what a long life as a SHIELD agent looks like."

Clint huffed a laugh and pushed at Phil hard enough that he'd need to sit his ass down on the ground next to him, or fall over. Phil took the easier option and took the seat, his heart warming when Natasha laughed more merrily as maneuvered herself down and let Clint tuck her between his legs, then extended her injured leg out over Phil's lap with no hesitation.

"There aren't that many SHIELD agents who get a long life," she observed with her crafted nonchalance, even as Clint flinched. But that could have been because she'd tug on his hands in turn and now poked and prodded, first over the bruising across his knuckles before she returned the favor of pulling and setting his broken fingers. Clint only let out a few pained grunts that he mostly stifled, and maybe squeezed her harder with his undamaged hand than a hug would entail.

"We can get you two to a hospital and have real doctors treat your wounds, you know," Phil couldn't help offering. He was all for doling out field medicine when it was needed, but he also had a full appreciation of doctors. Especially now.

"You're not going to be arrested," he added, though he was pretty sure they'd already picked up on that just by him not trying to chivvy them off the street.

Clint shrugged while Natasha shook her head, the nonchalance in full bloom.  "There's no need to bother anyone. Or deal with the paperwork.  We're ready to be extracted now, if that's how the bosses want to play it."

"I think Agent Woo is going to be busy for at least another day, dealing with the rest of the paperwork the locals are going to need, as well as being here for the handoff to the surveillance team," Phil speculated. "I think SHIELD can afford to cover a room for tonight or, if you don't want to skulk into somewhere others might think you need a hospital – or to be arrested – there would be room for you both to clean up and get rest on the Bus."

"So Fury really did let you reactivate one of those insane monstrosities?" Clint asked with a laugh that was at least more real than too mocking.

"Don't diss the Bus," Melinda admonished as she and Jimmy Woo walked out of the shadows.  "You call my ride a monstrosity again, nugget, and I won't let you up into the cockpit."

Ah, Mel, you know you love me. Hey, you're looking good," Clint offered as he twisted to take in the new arrivals. "Getting out of the bowels of SHIELD definitely agrees with you."

"Tell that to my gray hair, although I think I've earned most of them this afternoon."

Clint ducked his head. "Yeah, sorry about that. You, too, Jimmy. We didn't mean to – "

"Yeah, you did, but I understand. To make you feel better, I'll think of something you can do to make up for it."

"That's all on me, Agent Woo," Natasha spoke up to take the fall for her partner. "Clint didn't know any more than you did what was going on. I only had the time to let him get close enough to tag Ritterhaus. He didn't know I had recognized someone else in the room, as she had also recognized me, and he certainly didn't know I was going to shoot him. If anyone owes you for leaving you hanging – "

"Actually, Tash, I snuck out of the hospital before Jimmy and I could make contact, so I'm just as much at fault," Clint interrupted, falling on his own sword in return, so at least Natasha wouldn't have to face any punishment alone.

Twins. Closer than lovers.

"I think being placed on inactive duty will be punishment enough," Melinda suggested with one of her most gleeful smiles. "For … I don't know, three months wouldn't you say, Jimmy? For both of them? To make sure they're given enough time to recover?"

"Three!" Clint started to protest, only to be overridden by Jimmy:

"We better put them down for four, just to make sure there aren't any complications."

"Any more protests and they'll just keep making it longer," Phil reminded them when Natasha started to open her mouth this time.  "And I imagine that if one of them happens to tell Captain America about the medical restrictions, he'll insist on the full amount of time off from any Avengers actions, as well. At least the Captain America from the comics did, when he thought Bucky was downplaying his own injuries or when his best sergeant had presumed a little too much on their friendship when it came to the chain of command. "

"Yeah, well, you'd have more than just comics to go on when it came to Captain America, if you hadn't been so busy with your new team."

This time the vinegar was the undercurrent beneath Clint's tone, the hurt and the anger prevalent, and he looked just as surprised as Natasha that he'd given that much away.

Melinda tugged at Jimmy and they both began backing away, but not before she sent Phil a very pointed, very aggressive look.

Phil didn't need the threat, not for this part at least.

"You're right, I would, and that's just one of many apologies that I owe. There is nothing that makes what I did right, I understand that. But I am sorry. Sorry that I left you thinking I no longer trusted you or valued your friendship. Sorry that my actions caused you both harm. I never wanted that, never _could_ want that," he tried to assure them. "There are reasons, some that I don't even know, but none of them can be good enough to excuse me letting the secrecy go on as long as it did."

Natasha shrugged. "Fury lies. We both know that, live with that, and mostly we trust he has his reasons."

She would have been more convincing if she wasn't huddled between the strength of Clint's arms and was letting most of her hair hide so much of her face.

"Would it have helped things to hear from you directly, regardless?" she asked with an abrupt shake of her head; as if she'd only just now noticed her own body language and, so typically, thought she had to hide such vulnerability.

"Of course it would, but we did find out, probably while you were still recovering," and now she sounded more convincing.

"Afterward, we were just glad to know that you were alive. Which is not to say that Stark's not going to make you pay for making Pepper cry. I imagine he'll forgive you. Eventually,"  she said after a long beat and with the barest hint of a real smile.

Beyond the affectation of nonchalance, there was always her pragmatism. The streak of wicked humor was much more rare, in part because it had taken her so long to figure out when she was being teased in turn.

Phil smiled too, not that he was feeling too happy yet, but he needed to give her something, since she had just given him everything. He could tell that Clint wasn't quite as ready to put it all behind them; knew that he had a lot more apologies and explanations to give, but that was for just the two of them, not Melinda or Jimmy; certainly not Ward; not even Natasha.

Explanations for a number of actions, not just his most recent ones. Because Melinda was right, it was past high time for him to tell Clint.

"So do you accept our invitation to come hang out on the Bus for a day or more?" he offered up instead.  If he could keep them from heading back right away, he'd make the time, find the privacy. The kids – all of them – deserved a break, and Constanța was a good place to take one. A good place to shape a new future, as Natalia Romanova had once discovered upon becoming Natasha Romanoff.

****** 

" – and this is my area," Phil said with a gesture as he opened the door.

Watching how slow Clint moved into the room, he had to wonder if he should have left Clint downstairs with Natasha after the two of them had showered and borrowed some sweats; given the rest of the tour later. As if he'd noticed Phil's frown, Clint took pains to move more naturally and even spun around to take in everything.

Phil let him get away with it. For now.

"I had wondered where all the trinkets from your office had ended up. Fury handed out a couple of things, but … " Clint then stopped speaking and gave a shrug, his gesture toward the display case behind Phil's desk falling off as abruptly as his thought.

"I think the rest of my things are in storage. I haven't asked, because I don't think I want to know they were thrown away."

"I'm sure they didn't throw anything away. Gave it to Good Will, maybe."

Clint meant it as a joke, of course, but even he wasn't buying it.

"It's certainly bigger than your old office," he tried instead to fill the newly awkward silence.

Phil kicked himself internally for not having better prepared for this. It wasn't like Clint had known in advance that today would be the day they met up again, which Phil had had several hours.  He latched onto Clint's last statement, if only to keep some sort of conversation going, inane as it was.

"And, surprisingly, not that much smaller than my old apartment, if you don't count the kitchen area, which I never really used anyway," Phil observed back. "It never seemed worth paying big city prices for apartments I rarely stepped in, so I've never bothered beyond finding a place that would be safe to leave vacant for days or weeks at a time."

Clint gave a tentative, but genuine smile in response this time. "I think I was even worse than that, since the only things I ever cared to keep a hold of were my bows and I never leave them behind." He then shook his head.

"So, naturally, I'm living in Stark Tower now, where my bedroom is twice as large as any apartment or hotel I've ever stayed in, and that doesn't count the rest of "my quarters"," he said while doing half of the finger quotes, since three of his right-hand fingers were now taped to proper splints. "Tasha and I share a floor because even that's too much empty space,  but I think Bruce and Steve have full floors of their own and I know Tony's set aside an entire floor for Thor, if he ever comes back. Tony and Pepper's place covers two floors, and that's not counting two more floors of common areas that Tony set aside for the team to use with twenty-four hour access. Or the floor with the gyms and ranges. And the several floors of labs."

Another shrug, with Clint this time slipping his hands into his pockets and dropping his chin, one of his few tells that he's gotten uncomfortable, though one that normally ever only showed up when he was thinking about his childhood and life before SHIELD.

Phil only offered a smile of encouragement for him to go on, if he wanted to, eager to learn about Clint's life now, as well as just eager to have Clint willing to talk about something rather personal.

"Basically, we never need to leave for anything mundane if we don't want to. If it's not already provided, or isn't contained in one of the retail shops that make up the first few floors of the tower, JARVIS pretty much orders it before you even realize you actually want it, and Tony has all the local eateries on speed dial for delivery, whether they normally deliver or not." He finally looked up, looked directly at Phil instead of keeping his gaze to the floor or their surroundings. "It's fucking crazy there, sir."

Phil gestured to the couch set at a ninety degree angle to his desk, another rescue from his office in an attempt to make the Bus his home. The couch was one that both Natasha and Clint had spent time tucked into over the years. The difference here was when Clint gratefully lowered himself down, finally not hiding that he was hurting from the toll of the day, Phil took a seat alongside him instead of moving to the chair behind his desk.

"I don't think you need to call me sir anymore. You don't work for me; don't really work _for_ SHIELD anymore at all. From what I understand, don't you now work _with_ SHIELD?"

Clint ducked his head again, but given that his ears were pinking, Phil decided he was at least a different sort of uncomfortable. "Yeah, on the books I'm now a consultant, which was all Tony. And Cap, actually, even though he does more day-to-day work with SHIELD now than Tasha or I do." He let more smile show through; a smirk, really, so Phil was prepared.

"So I should call you Coulson now, like the rest of your gang?"

Phil tried out a more natural smile, glad to see Clint was at least comfortable enough to tease. "Actually I wouldn't mind if you  – "

Clint's smirk turned into a full out grin. "Oh, you mean Agent? Tony is still pretty messed up from discovering your first name is actually Phil and not Agent."

Phil let his smile turn back into the expression of fond exasperation he so often ended up wearing around Clint. Phil could handle the teasing; would work with it if that's what Clint needed to stay comfortable.

"So you _do_ know what my first name is."

That had Clint flushing again, the grin disappearing. He actually turned his face away for a moment, before turning back. "I don't know what the J. stands for," he said with a touch of something.  Bravado, certainly, because Clint could never not turn something into a challenge. But there was definitely something more there. An asking, as if knowing was some last milestone of trust, as if Phil had intentionally kept it secret when, really, he'd never known that it mattered.

Phil could get seasick from the swiftness of Clint's changing demeanor, but he really wasn't feeling that even keeled himself.

"Would you be disappointed to know that it's just the jay, the initial?" Phil asked, showing his own measure of embarrassment. The answer certainly wasn't worth the importance Clint seemed to want to grant it.

"My folks both had J-named grandfathers," he further explained as if that would somehow give the reveal weight. "James and Jason. But my folks never could decide who should get the honor.  Instead, they figured that by just naming me Phillip J., each family could make the claim."

As lame as it was, his answer did seem to ease something within Clint.

"I don't know whether I'm appalled by how they took the easy way out, or whether I should applaud them for their imminently logical solution."

"Trust me, they took the easy way out. As a way of keeping the peace. I don't know if, had there ever been a brother, they would have given him one of the names and petitioned to have mine changed to the other, but all I have are sisters. Pricilla, Penelope, and Phoebe. "

It took a moment for Clint to react to the fact that all the Coulson children had names beginning with the letter P, but soon enough Phil received an incredulous look. "I'd make the obvious bathroom joke, but I'm still caught up for some reason with just realizing that your initials are PJ. Like PJs. All I can see is you in the Captain America footie pajamas that Tony ordered and gifted to Steve last Christmas. Please tell me you don't have a pair."

Phil had seen what the Captain America adult pajamas looked like, of course. He had an alert on both his computer and his phone for all Avengers merchandise announcements.  There were five alerts unopened right now, and he'd checked and deleted the ones from before as the last thing he'd done before shutting down his office to head out into Constanța. Stark seemed determined to make his new fortune off of merchandising. Or maybe it was just another way to stay outside the grasp of SHIELD and the Council. Every sell sheet mentioned twenty five percent of the _gross_ profit when to assorted Avengers' charities.

"I only collect vintage memorabilia," Phil told him, which wasn't really a lie. The Captain America pajamas he'd bought (along with Hawkeye and Black Widow versions) had been presents for his nieces and nephews, while any of the other new Avengers merchandise he might have picked up were opened and used, not collected.

"Probably wise. Grown men look a little too hipster in footie pajamas and I don't think I want to imagine you that way si -- Phil."

The "Phil" came with a shy smile, one that Phil couldn't help responding to with his own hopeful one.

"I know you let Natasha speak for the both of you; that you accepted my resurrection being kept a secret from you, but you don't have to," Phil had to apologize once more. "If you want to scream at me, slug me – "

Clint's gaze shifted back to the floor, but he immediately started talking instead of keeping it all inside, as had been his usual reaction to emotional situations in the past. It looked like they'd both changed from what had happened. Phil was glad to see that maybe not all of it had been a negative.

Clint then started shaking his head. "It's hard to keep hold of the anger, when you're just so damn glad to know that it was a lie. I was hurt – we were _all_ hurt, not just Tasha and me – but people move on.  Most of SHIELD thinks _we_ were the ones who move on, and willingly. That we're now too important and famous to be agents anymore since people are calling us superheroes."

The huff he gave then wasn't remotely laughter.

"We moved on because we had too. Because everyone was hurting or scared, distrustful and depressed. Everything had gotten broken and everything needed to be fixed, starting with the City and including SHIELD itself. But by the time SHIELD was ready to deal with us again, there were so many new agents, lots of reorganized departments and jobs and supervisors. It wasn't just different because of what had happened, but because SHIELD had reinvented itself. I tried to say it wasn't the same place because you weren't there any longer, but those same changes would have had to happen even if you hadn't died. It still would have turned into a place that couldn't really find a place for us."

Phil wanted to protest but it wasn't as if he didn't agree that for the first time, SHIELD felt like it could do just fine with Phillip J. Coulson, too. Neither did Clint need any of Phil's platitudes, that he could have found a place for the three of them had he just been there. Even if that might have been true, Phil hadn't been there.

"Our faces had gone public, so Strike Force Delta was over, even if SHIELD did manage, with a lot of help from Tony, to pull or mess up a lot of the footage that included Natasha or me." At this point Clint straightened up, but only so he could lean back. As if he was just too tired to keep his head held up.

"Tasha's experience no longer mattered except for one or two of the weird ops, and she could only handle so many stints training the juniors or with the analysts. Sure, I could have kept going, since the whole point of a sniper is getting the work done without getting seen,  but it wasn't like there were all that many agents who felt comfortable having Loki's head stooge as their back-up, even if they all tried so very hard to show that they didn't blame me."

Even though Phil had promised not to interrupt, lest doing so send Clint into retreat again, he couldn't let such a statement just hang there between them.

"Clint, you _weren't_ to blame. No one could have held out against Loki, even Thor was fooled by him, something I was a direct witness to."

Clint rolled his head Phil's direction and offered a hollow smile to show he appreciated the sentiment. "Doesn't really matter in the end, whether it was my fault or not, sir," was what he said, however as he rolled his head back to look up at the ceiling. "The trust was gone. I could have worked damn hard to regain it, and I would have, but adding in the resentment of me being one of the Avengers? Hell, I'm just a regular guy who rarely misses.  That could be any one, could be one Grant Ward, if he put in the kind of time and training I had to. I'm no fucking super hero."

"Oh, Clint, you are. Don't you see? It's _because_ you're a regular guy, because _you_ are the one there alongside super soldiers, geniuses, and gods, standing up against monsters, super villains and mad scientists." Greatly daring, Phil reached over and put his hand against Clint's jaw. Surprisingly, Clint not just allowed him to do so, but shifted to rest against Phil's palm.

"Someone else might be able to do similar things, might even become damn good and somehow earn the title of Hawkeye, but we are all a sum of our parts, not just our skills," Phil told him; _willed_ him to believe. "No one could ever replace Clinton Francis Barton. Not in the Avengers, not in SHIELD, and not with me. Clint Barton is an extraordinary man and I am privileged to have been given a chance to know him.  To be given a second chance with him. And, to love him."

Clint went very still. "You love me?"

"For long enough that I'm shamed from never telling you. For letting you think that I didn't. It doesn't matter if you feel the same. Whether you love me back or not, I don't want any more lies between us. I can be content with a working relationship, happy with a friendship, but just having known you and knowing now that you're still a part of the entire world, if not my own, that's … " He didn't know how to explain it better. Words couldn't convey the immensity of what he felt, the sudden peace and a certain contentment that, even if he never figured out anything more about what had happened when he'd died and how he'd been brought back, at least he'd been given the opportunity to offer Clint just this.

"Say it again, please."

Phil couldn't help closing his eyes in relief, even as he scooted closer. "I love you, Clint. I am _in_ love with you," he added, opening his eyes up again so he could see as well as feel the tension leave Clint's body.

"I would very much like an opportunity to make any kind of future with you. I'm sorry for leaving you, for abandoning and hurting you, and I will spend every day of my life trying to make sure I never do that again," he promised as Clint seemed to melt into Phil's side. "I want to be your lover, call you my boyfriend, kiss you on the bridge of the Helicarrier and then tell Nick Fury to stuff his secrets up his ass. What I'd really, really like, is a chance to grow old with you."

"Okay."

Phil waited; opened his mouth to ask okay to which one, but he then closed it when he realized he already had the answer that mattered. Okay, to any one of his offers because Phil had truly meant it when he'd said just knowing that Clint was out there safe, knowing he was loved, was enough.

Still, Phil rather hoped that Clint was also onboard with kissing on the bridge and telling Nick to stuff it.

– finis  –

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
